Frank Castle. The Punisher. He has been my favorite comic book character for a number of years now and that really isn't changing any time soon. The symbol though, has been hijacked by a group of criminals, notably rapists and murderers. That's just another day in the office if you completely disregard the nature of how they get their pay.
Chris Kyle
We all know who Chris Kyle is. Not that Hollywoodized propaganda piece from American Sniper, but the real "man". He is the most decorated sniper in US military history with 161 confirmed kills (and God only knows how many more). Let us call Christ Kyle what he is: a serial killer. If the layperson did what Kyle did (not being in a uniform), they would have been forcibly thrown into an industrial rape center. Chris Kyle became part of a unit referred to as "The Punishers", named and designed after the Marvel Comics character. If you are asking yourself, "Well what's wrong with that?", let me tell you. America invaded Iraq for no good reason. In essence, Chris Kyle and his ilk were terrorists in Iraq. America was the bad guy. Chris Kyle was not some altruistic protector of freedom. If you believe he was, then I would kindly ask you how in the world our freedoms ended up in Iraq.
American Police
All of this "thin blue line" shtick going around. Sure it sells some hats, sells some t-shirts, and it gets that 'Murican blood flowing. But it really means nothing. The thin blue line that people like to use to apologize for anything that the police do, but for some reason not knowing that these same cops will kill them at the first opportunity. This is true whether they have a broken tail light or have a plant. There is no law too small for the State to kill you for. No cop would betray The Code of Silence for you. Not over their "brothers".
The Punisher is someone representative of a failure of the state. Originally coming out of Vietnam, Frank Castle came home trading one war zone for another. Frank Castle is a victim of the failure of the state. A President who put him in a war that there was no business to be in, a military that desensitized him to violence, and a police force and a court system that would not give him justice for the murders of his family.
Why do the enforcer's of the State's sadistic whims praise the failures of the State? This appropriation (for lack of a better word) of this symbol simply doesn't jibe with me.